


Halt and Catch Fire

by narcolepticbadger



Category: Dead To Me (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence, F/F, Friendship, Post-Season/Series 01, Suicidal Thoughts, says 'fuck' a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-06 02:24:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18841711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narcolepticbadger/pseuds/narcolepticbadger
Summary: Steve was floating in her pool, and Judy was lying over the double yellow line in the middle of the road, and what was one more dead body, anyway?





	Halt and Catch Fire

_throw yourself into the road, darling, you haven’t got a chance_

—Withnail & I

.

.

.

_If I see you again or you go anywhere near my family, I will shoot you in the fucking head._

As it turned out, it had been easy to pull the trigger—such a small movement, like beckoning someone forward—and in the soft recoil that followed, Jen hadn’t felt anything at all.

Only it wasn’t Judy’s brains that splattered against the side of the house, or her body that slipped so lithely into the pool, or her blood disturbing the even color of the water, clouding it dark.  

Everything about this was _wrong_.

She had thought someone would come running at the loud-quiet sound of the gun (had stared up at Charlie’s window, praying the blinds would stay closed): the police, fucking Karen from next door, even Judy appearing out of the night would not have surprised her, knowing the woman’s knack for turning up precisely where she wasn’t wanted at inopportune moments.

There were _supposed_ to be witnesses for these things, weren’t there?

But nothing continued to happen (and continued, and continued), and Jen stood and watched Steve bob gently in the water at her feet, wondering how long it would take a human body to sink, to be pulled under by its own dead weight.

She eased the gun back into the pocket of her robe and reached for her phone instead, thumbing the lockscreen open and pressing the number at the top of her contacts list without looking at it.

Judy didn’t answer, no matter how many times Jen touched the familiar letters of her name and listened to the ringing on the other end, and she didn’t know what she had expected (not fucking _this_ ) from someone who didn’t even have the courtesy to have her voicemail set up in the year 2019.

She didn’t  _want_ to talk to Judy, really, but she wasn’t going to sit vigil over Steve, of all fucking people, alone—she couldn’t bring herself to stay there any longer, waiting for something to happen—and that meant finding Judy and _making_ her come back, whatever the consequences for either of them would be.

Which meant, first, doing several other incredibly stupid things.

Like unearthing the weather cover for the pool and wrangling it into place as best she could, though the job was too much for one person even with her adrenaline cranked high, keeping her numb. Ted had always been the one to handle these things (Ted had been the one who wanted the damn pool in the first place), and something in the back of her mind whispered that she would feel the aftereffects in her shoulders tomorrow, as if that even registered on her list of fucking worries at the moment.

Like tiptoeing back into the house to check on her boys, both lax with sleep, and she had to fight the urge to just stay there, soothing herself with the even sounds of their breathing.

Like driving without direction on a stomach full of wine and not much else, though Jen would swear she had never been more lucid in her life.

Road followed on road, the streetlights gradually becoming more sparse as she reached and passed the city limits, and still she did not know where she was going until she, suddenly, _did_ when the bend came out of the dark in front of her and the memorials left out for her husband blinked by in the peripherals of her vision.

And the body in the middle of the road, laid across the double yellow line like a sacrifice—a deer, maybe, but it was Ted she saw for a crackling instant, the way he had looked in the crime scene photos _(wrecked)_ —didn’t flinch at all when she braked hard, skidding to a halt inches from a pair of boots, from an upturned (even now, supplicating) palm.

Jen recognized that green dress, and she knew.

Knew, too, that it had been a mistake to think that what she had done to Steve had made her numb, because, oh, she was feeling a great mess of things, after all.

“What the fucking _fuck_ , Judy?” she spat as she climbed out of the car and slammed the door to punctuate the question, half-afraid that it had already happened, that someone else had _hit_ —until the face turned towards her in answer, slowly.

“Jen?”

“ _This_ is your idea of ‘making amends,’ huh, fucking laying yourself down on a blind curve and trying to cause another hit and run?”

Judy just looked up at her, squinting against the glare of the headlights, and fidgeted a shoulder against the pavement in a careless shrug.

“You were right, you know. What you said about…” She took a shaky breath, and the next words sounded wet, like she was drowning underneath them. “What I could do to make things better for you.”

The little wooden bird gifted to Henry, the check stuffed inside like the worst kind of apology, like Judy could just _pay_ for the damages, for the way she had crash-landed into their lives. Into their home.

But, then, it hadn’t been an apology. Not one intended for the betrayals Jen had known about, at least.

 _You can die_. _You can disappear off the fucking planet._

Jen had seethed those words at her, and meant them.

And—making herself look at Judy, at the way she was shivering pathetically on the ground, at the way Judy said _okay_ to everything, especially the things that hurt—not meant them.

Jen closed her eyes briefly, sighed. “No, I wasn’t.”

She felt her way down to sit beside Judy, holding her knees tight to her chest and pulling her robe around herself. This was a bad idea on so many levels, but she was _tired_ , the kind of tired that crept up behind you and took your legs out when you least expected it, and maybe the trainwreck her life had become of late could pause and let her rest, just for a moment, before the next fire began.

Silence filled the narrow space between them, the night deceptively calm in a way Jen had long ago learned not to trust. If she reached out her hand, she could trace the yellow marking that divided the lanes, cross over to the other side (she had never been able to remember if you were supposed to run with or against traffic, before); and reaching the other way, there was Judy, quiet for the first time since she had met her.

“You should really set up your voicemail,” she said, finally, to say something. “Or at least answer your fucking phone.”

Judy nodded. “I know. I’m sorry.” She was crying, still, and doing the horrible, suffocating work of trying not to, trying to bury it deep enough that it couldn’t find a way to leak out. “I’m so, so sorry, Jen.”

“Fuck, Judy, can you snap out of it? I shot Steve, okay?”

It was delicate, the soft _oh_ that broke from Judy at the revelation, and she sounded more than ever like some small animal that had been struck, left wounded in the road.

Jen wondered if she had sounded like that, too, when she got the call about Ted.

“He came to the house, looking for you. And we got into an argument, and I had Ted’s gun, and he fucking _came_ at me, and I—”

“You shot him,” Judy repeated quietly, and, hearing it echoed back, Jen felt the reality of the situation slam into her like a swing to the gut and doubled over again, swallowing hard against the sudden need to puke.

A touch skimmed low over the base of her spine, riding up between her shoulder blades and resting there, a thin coil of warmth that Jen leaned into despite herself.

“Hey, you can see Venus tonight.” Judy’s voice was steady, calm, as if it were a perfectly normal remark for a person to make in response to learning their ex-lover was dead. “I’ve never seen it this bright before. Light pollution, you know?

“No shit,” Jen murmured, and let those familiar hands guide her down, their shoulders nesting together as she lay flat and watched Judy trace out the path of the planet, unremarkable to her own eyes amidst the lattice of constellations strung above them like windows into a distant city.

“It just looks like another star.”

“Yeah.”

If she moved, just a little, her body would overlay the place Ted had been found, and—was this what he had seen for all those hours he was dying, these stars he had never known the names for? Was this all there _was_ to see, in the end, a few lights coming out of the dark and then nothing at all?

“I burned all your shit,” she said thickly, angling her head to see Judy. This close, the woman was all hair, a ridge of lips. “That you left at the house.”

“It’s okay.”

Sickness climbed up her throat again at the too-quick way Judy said it, like Steve was there, breathing down her neck with that clenched-jaw vein of anger he had running under his skin.  

Like Steve was there, _breathing_.

“Fuck.”

She did throw up then, red and watery like the eddying blood she was desperately trying _not_ to think about, while Judy held her hair back and muttered her typical woo-woo nonsense into the bend of Jen's neck. And when she was finished, Judy kept holding her, arms clasping gently around her waist, and Jen let her.

“Did… what did you do with… him?”

“Nothing,” Jen whispered, wishing she could wash her mouth out. “I tried calling you.”

“You just left him there in the pool?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I couldn’t—Christ, I left him in the fucking _pool_.”

Judy’s arms tightened another notch, keeping her from shaking. From completely fucking losing it. “It’s okay.”

“Don’t say that. You always say that when it’s not okay.”

And, before Judy could deny that that was _exactly_ what she did, or start apologizing again, Jen pressed on, burdened with another confession that would claw its own way out if she wasn’t careful. “I came out here because I need—”

(What _was_ it that she was taking pains to say she needed, besides a stiff drink and a different fucking life and—)

“I need you to come home.”

It was Judy who rose first, wobbling a little in her heels until the vertigo settled, and she pulled at Jen’s hand to compel her to follow along behind, nearly unbalancing again when Jen’s body rocked into hers as she obeyed the pressure on her wrist.

“Then we should go home,” Judy said, bright-eyed, like everything was that simple.

It was  _tender_ (and Jen had never used that word before, for anyone) how Judy tilted her head slightly, contemplating, and then stretched to thumb the wetness from Jen’s own cheeks, the tears she hadn’t realized had fallen.

“Are you okay to drive?” she asked, and the question, in another, less-fucked lifetime, would have been almost funny.

Almost.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

Judy talked about karma as they drove, and rocks in a forest, and Jen half-listened ( _I_   _would never do that_ , she said, once; and Judy, pained, _Steve did_ ) as the streetlights, crowding the road now as they slipped back into the city, washed yellow over their faces.

As long as they didn’t stop, as long as they could keeping outrunning the flames building behind them, Jen could deceive herself, blind herself, _believe_ that everything would be all right when they got to where they were going.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what this is, but I really needed to write it.
> 
> Come yell with me about this show on tumblr @loveexpelrevolt—I could use the company.


End file.
